The image of her, of Marcelline looking up from her paperwork, eyes smiling at him from under her long lashes, it pulled him awake on the pillow so many mornings, still after all this time.

A tingle climbed the rungs of his ribs. Everything else could burn. He cared a lot about this one.

This Jonathan character had said way more than he meant to in his message, perhaps mistaking Owen for a simple gamecock that could be useful to him, if only Owen could be convinced to believe the right things.

The leather on the steering wheel of Owen’s C63 had an irregular dark patch at about two o’clock, right where the smooth-grain leather wrap gave over to the grippy padding. A similar smudge was at the edge of the center console, rubbed nearly invisible by the people who had detailed the car after he got it back. A few of the white stitches in the cover on the gear selector weren’t cream colored anymore. The dealership had wanted to reupholster the stained trim, but Owen had declined.

Marcelline had bled a little in her flight. He never knew how to feel about that.

So Jonathan wanted something from Owen that was probably as simple as a lot of money and to be rid of an item that could land him in quite a bit of trouble. It would be nothing for Owen to make that happen. It was his job to do just that.

If Marcelline was in fact dead, all that was in it for Owen was the chance to know what had really happened, to maybe finally be sure whether she’d set him up. And if she wasn’t dead, it was the same thing, but with even more potential.

He scanned the dashboard, a beautiful thing, really. He admired the mellow sheen of his trouser leg. The fine, carefully crafted things in life. He thought of Marcelline, who never got closer than his guest bed.

He keyed back into his voice mail and listened to the message again.

She was there in Jonathan’s script. The bit about the curse of the painting and all the Br’er Rabbit dissembling over how the bad history of the piece might be a problem for the Anningers. Please don’t throw me in that briar patch. Owen could practically feel her smirking.

Jonathan had known her better than he let on. Or he’d been paying better attention than he wanted to admit, as any straight man would in her presence. Either way, she’d left enough of an impression to write lines for him to speak when he wanted to wield her influence, even all this time later.